Month: April 2020

GLOBAL
China Daily. China postpones teacher certification exam to H2   China’s Ministry of Education Friday announced the postponement of the teacher certification examination to the second half of the year over coronavirus concerns… College graduates who are eligible to apply for the teacher certification examination and have professional competence can be employed as teachers before attending the exam, the circular said.

Education Nation. Estonia Offers Webinar Series On Distance Learning For International Audience

edsys. 10 Educational Movies Every Teacher Should See

Global Partnership for Education. Central African Republic: Promising progress in education despite many challenges   At the regional training center for teachers, I saw teachers attending a training on e-readers to compensate for the lack of other pedagogical materials. The center has a library, but shelves were empty. Instead, hundreds of digital learning files are stocked in digital memories and made available through e-readers.

Upali Newspapers. British Council Sri Lanka’s English Language Teacher Educator Conference showcases achievements and reflects on issues and challenges   The overall theme of the conference was ‘English language teacher education in the 21st century’ and explored challenges faced by teachers and the techniques, tools and methodologies that need to be deployed to support and assist the teachers.

UNITED STATES
Deans for Impact. COVID-19 Teacher Preparation Policy Database   As a public resource, we have developed the COVID-19 Teacher Preparation Policy Database, which covers changes to licensure, clinical requirements, entry and exit assessments, and program approval. We are currently monitoring changes across all 50 states and DC. We plan to add U.S. territories in subsequent analyses.

Education Week. Shifting Science Instruction to the Coronavirus: New Activities, Units   Working with researchers from two universities, nine teachers designed high school science activities they hope will accomplish two things at once. Students will get the chance to study a natural phenomenon that’s meaningful in their lives—a key aim of the NGSS—and they’ll also get to process the pandemic’s impact on their lives.

Go React. 6 Assignments For Online Instructors In Teacher Preparation   While the current pandemic is making life especially hard for teacher preparation professionals, there are solutions. With the right video tool and assignments, online instructors can provide candidates with the practice, feedback, and sense of community they need during this pandemic. 

Hechinger Report. Learning to teach from naughty avatars: Virginia study finds prospective teachers improve their handling of student misbehavior when training simulations are combined with human coaching    Running computerized simulations of classrooms isn’t cheap or a way to save time. No one has yet figured out how to create virtual characters that can talk and respond automatically through artificial intelligence. Simulations still require a live actor to operate the students behind the curtain and a human teaching coach to watch and give feedback to the teaching student.

Johnson City Press. ETSU sets up Homework Hotline to assist students learning from home   Future teachers studying in the East Tennessee State University Clemmer College of Education are now offering help to local public school students as they continue their courses remotely amid school closures.

New York Times.
1) Early Education Is More Demanding Than Ever, and Experts Have Concerns   To make room for test prep, they reduced time spent on child-led, curiosity-driven lessons. “It made the whole atmosphere of education become over-focused on learning certain facts and skills at certain ages,” said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed. D., a professor emerita and teacher educator at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.
2) What to Know About Montessori Preschools: They’re popular, but how do they differ from conventional nursery schools?   It’s also important, Green says, for Montessori teachers to have credentials from a program that has been accredited by the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education.

The Chattanoogan. Dalton State Offers Teacher Certification Program For Non-Teachers   The University of North Georgia in partnership with Dalton State College will offer a one-year teacher certification program for individuals currently holding a bachelor’s degree or higher which will make them eligible to teach in their content area at the middle school or high school level.

Tulsa World. ‘Zoombombers’ taunt Oklahoma State Board of Education members with racial epithets, sexually explicit language   During the meeting, the state Board of Education approved a stopgap measure giving new teachers a temporary, one-year state certification until they can complete their final requirements made impossible by the statewide closure of schools and teacher certification testing centers.

Washington Post. Leading public education advocates write open letter to Joe Biden: Your ‘statements encourage us’   All children deserve a well-resourced public school filled with high-quality educational experiences… All children deserve schools that have counselors, social workers, librarians, and nurses. All children deserve a full curriculum, with science labs and arts programs.

NEW YORK STATE
NYSATE/NYACTE. Fall 2020 Conference  In place of holding a conference, we are planning to host a series of webinars related to the impact of the pandemic on the work we do. 

NEW YORK CITY
Teachers College. Who You Gonna Call: TC’s Center for Technology & School Change is a go-to resource for the new online era in K-12 education   “I don’t believe K-12 or higher education will ever be quite the same,” says Ellen Meier. “Education is going to include more technology, and the challenge is to prepare teachers to use it creatively to ensure that our students are creators who use tools for problem-solving. 

GLOBAL
Global Partnership for Education.
1) Emergency teaching online: 7 steps to get started   The first post focused on platforms and content, while this one focuses on preparing teachers and learners, instruction, and assessment.
2) How can Sierra Leone’s education response after Ebola help with the COVID-19 response?   WhatsApp groups are great for sharing messages and giving support. Great work has been done in Bangladesh on recording teacher training support on SIM cards, which teachers can then insert into their own phone to watch.

InsideHigherEd. China’s Limitations on Distance Education   Many popular online platforms — including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and some Google functions — are largely inaccessible to teachers and students on the Chinese mainland… Educators are scrambling to upload materials to whatever platforms they find handy and usable, and many lack experience dealing with Chinese internet restrictions, widely described as the great firewall of China.

PDK International. PDK2020 and Educators Rising National Conference will be cancelled for 2020   We are currently evaluating options for holding virtual competitions and will notify everyone of the status by the first week in May.

UNITED STATES
AACTE. AACTE and EdPrep Lab Presents Webinar: Preparing Educators for Deeper Learning and Equity during COVID-19  [Zoom Registration for April 23 Webinar]

AACTE/SCALE. News From edTPA®   Guidance for Candidates Impacted by School Closure; Announcements and Resources

Education Week.
1) The Coronavirus Just Might End School Privatization Nonsense [D. Ravitch OpEd]  In most parts of the nation, public schools are the center of community life. They provide free meals, a nurse (usually), and instruction by certified teachers (unlike some charters and many of the religious schools that accept vouchers). 
2) Still Mostly White and Female: New Federal Data on the Teaching Profession    Fewer than half of teachers took a course in teaching English-learners before their first year teaching. The survey asked teachers if they took a graduate or undergraduate course in selected subject areas before their first year in the classroom. Here are the results for public school teachers:
79 percent took a course in lesson planning
77 percent in learning assessment
74 percent in classroom management techniques
70 percent in serving students with special needs
65 percent in serving students from diverse economic backgrounds
56 percent in using student performance data to inform instruction
41 percent in teaching English-language learners 
3) Student-Teachers In Limbo During School Shutdowns. Here’s How States Can Help   Teacher-preparation programs are scrambling to figure out how to support teacher-candidates while still meeting state requirements, which are starting to be revised in some places. 
4) Teacher-Candidates Will Be Able to Take the Praxis Certification Test at Home   Passing the Praxis exam is a requirement to be a teacher in about half of states, and the test is administered in a strictly controlled and timed environment. Testing centers are now closed—but starting in mid-May, teacher-candidates will be able to take a Praxis exam at home or another secure location, ETS spokeswoman Alescia Dingle said in an email. 

Hechinger Report. Teachers need lots of training to do online learning well. Coronavirus closures gave many just days.   Some colleges ask teachers to complete nine credits to receive a certificate in online teaching. Experts in the area say planning, designing and implementing a high-quality online course can take more than a year; the best training is customized to meet teachers where they are and build on their knowledge.

Information Age Publishing. Call for Chapters: Preparing Quality Teachers: Advances in Clinical Practice   All inquiries and documents should be submitted via e-mail to Drew Polly at [email protected]. [deadline Mar. 15, 2021]

InsideHigherEd. The Higher Education Act and the Pandemic

NEA Today. Caught in Limbo, Aspiring Educators Ask for Flexibility   In cases where states won’t waive requirements around PPTA or EdTPA, NEA Aspiring Educators are advocating for provisional licenses, which would be based on the recommendations of their college or university programs, so that they can be hired and then complete the testing during their first year of work.

Pearson Education. Subject-Specific Considerations for Completing edTPA in a Virtual Learning Environment   As with all alternative arrangements, the teacher candidate must consult with their program faculty/instructor or building level administrator (for unaffiliated teacher candidates) and P–12 partners to determine if the VLE is an appropriate and a viable alternative for both the teacher candidate and P–12 learners.

Teacher Education Podcast. Equity in the Classroom with National Teacher of the Year, Rodney Robinson

Texas Public Policy Foundation. The Case for Escape Hatches from Higher Education Accreditation  Some accreditors have used their quasi-regulatory power to impose ideologically controversial viewpoints. For example, in 2006, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education received unexpected criticism of its standard requiring education schools to evaluate the “dispositions” of students toward vague concepts such as “social justice” and “diversity.”… “investing 18 months and hundreds of hours of faculty and staff time within the current flawed system is not useful”. Other fields have similar results. The “best teacher education programs tend not to pursue NCATE accreditation at all”

The74. Analysis: Keeping Teachers at the Center of the Classroom — Physical or Virtual — Is Key to Learning, Especially for Low-Income Kids  The availability of digital high-quality curricula, online teacher training supports and interactive learning tools are essential for online learning. And the key is to keep the teacher at the center of the classroom, whether physical or virtual. 

Washington Post.
1) Uncommon Schools are demanding for students and teachers. This teacher likes it that way.   When Mike Taubman was studying to be a teacher, he encountered little love for public charter schools. In his progressive graduate education school, at Stanford University, the highest-achieving, no-excuses charters were often seen as a right-wing plot that chewed up young teachers and treated children like automatons.
2) How covid-19 has laid bare the vast inequities in U.S. public education  …renowned teacher educator Gloria Ladson-Billings argued in a celebrated address to the educational research community, the “achievement gap” is a misnomer, implying an expectation that all children would perform equally at school. Instead, she suggested, we should train our collective gaze on the “education debt” — the damage done to particular communities by “the historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions and policies that characterize our society.”

NEW YORK STATE
Univ. of Albany School of Education.  …in order to support a greater need for remote learning in K-12 education… launched the website Remote Education Resource Center, or RemoteEd.

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. NYC limits school spending to remote learning and other coronavirus expenses   Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed cutting the education department’s spending by over $221 million, including a reduction in next year’s school budgets and broader cuts to teacher training.

Teachers College. Online Learning Resources

GLOBAL
Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies. Teaching in the times of coronavirus

International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030  Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak – Call for Action on Teachers   The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 calls on all governments, education providers and funders – public and private – to recognise the critical roles that teachers play in the COVID-19 response and recovery.

UNITED STATES
California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) and COVID-19 Guidelines & Frequently Asked Questions   1Q. Will candidates still be required to complete a TPA? 1A. Yes. Completion of any TPA is required by law (Education Code Section 44259) for all Multiple Subject and Single Subject teacher candidates…

Education Week.
1) Map: Coronavirus and School Closures
2) Student-Teachers Caught in Middle by Shutdowns: Worries about unfinished work, licensing tests   The widespread closures have caused a lot of uncertainty for student-teachers. Will they be able to finish their student-teaching assignments? If not, will they be able to meet the requirements for the performance-based licensing test edTPA?

Taos News. Early childhood documentary draws major crowd   Valdez went on to describe how the UNM-Taos campus … provides a fully equipped learning lab where students who want to become pre-K educators and child care workers can come and get the credentials they need. He assured attendees who wanted to pursue such a career that the college has many financial aid opportunities available for that purpose.

US News. 2021 Best Education Schools.  Teachers College: #2 in Elementary Teacher Education (tie), #2 in Educational Administration and Supervision (tie), #3 in Secondary Teacher Education, #3 in Curriculum and Instruction

Stanford Univ/edTPA. Request For edTPA Alternative Arrangements Virtual Learning Environment

Washington Post. In Chicago, schools closed during a 1937 polio epidemic and kids learned from home — over the radio   As one report stated, “with the advent of broadcasting some 15 years ago there were prognosticators who expected radio to supplant the textbook — and even the teacher.” Yet, as the polio crisis showed, it had “become increasingly more apparent that the most radio can do in the teaching role is to stimulate thinking and to inspire further study.”

NEW YORK STATE
Governor Cuomo: 2021 Executive Budget. Master Teacher Program  Those selected will pledge to engage in peer mentoring, participate in mental health professional learning communities, work closely with pre-service and early career teachers and counselors to foster a supportive environment for the next generation of educators…

New York State Education Department.
1) Guidance for Educator Preparation Programs on Clinical Experiences and Certification Impacted by the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency  •Clinical Experiences •edTPA •Certification Exams •Mentoring During the First Year of Employment •Frequently Asked Questions
2) Office of College and University Evaluations. Regulatory Relief for Temporary Closure of an Institution Due to a Disaster
Section 52.2 (c) (4) (iii) of Commissioner’s Regulations defines a process to allow an institution to grant a semester hour of credit for fewer hours of instruction and study than those specified in subdivision (o) of section 50.1 of the Regulations when the state or local government temporarily closes the institution due to a disaster. In the event of such a disaster (as defined in section 50.1(w) of Regulations), the Commissioner may approve the institution to maintain a statement of academic standards that defines the considerations that establish equivalency of instruction and study. Institutions that close temporarily due to a disaster may request a change in the statement of academic standards for equivalency of instruction and study.
3) Office of Higher Education Educator Preparation Newsletter March 2020

• Future guidance related to program requirements will be posted on the Office of College and University Evaluation website and certification requirements will be posted on the Office of Teaching Initiatives website.

• Certification Test Centers Closed U.S.- and Canada-based Pearson VUE-owned test centers are currently closed until April 16, 2020.
• DASA Training. All approved DASA training providers, and institutions of higher education that include the DASA training in their educator preparation program curricula, have approval to offer the DASA training entirely online during the time period of the state of emergency declared by the Governor for the COVID-19 crisis.